The original owner and founder of my present employer (now retired) is an entrepreneur, and a classic Type A personality. Hard driven, and demanding as hell, but as demanding of himself as anyone else, and under it all, a decent human being. (Only Type A I've ever known who, when confronted with evidence he'd made a mistake, would just say, "You're right, I'm wrong, now go fix it." Mind you, he'd never apologize, but he'd admit he was wrong.) Let's call him Bill (because that's not his name).

So, we had this store manager who made assholes smell like cinnamon flavored unicorn farts. If someone did something wrong, or sometimes if they did something right, he'd threaten to hold them down and fart on their head. (He never pulled that shit with - or around - me, despite me being his assistant at the time, because I'd been around longer, and got on well with corporate. If I'd complained, it would have been taken seriously, and the California Labor Board likes to drag employers out into the parking lot for public executions. I don't like office politics, but that's not the same as not knowing how to play the game.) Let's call him Fred.

Displays sell merchandise, and while Fred had the leadership skills of a child molester in front of an angry mob of peasants with pitchforks and torches, he knew retail, so we always had working displays of novelty merchandise, like singing fish (remember Big Mouth Billy Bass? I wish I could forget), and we sold the hell out of them. (This is why I have a pathological hatred of all merchandise that makes noise. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Homer Simpson Talking Beer Opener.) Well, this particular year, one of the hot Christmas items was a "singing Christmas frog." Basically, a frog plushie with a sound chip. Push the little switch embedded in its little paw, and it plays the melody from "Jingle Bells" using various croaking sounds for a minute or two. It was cute, once, mildly amusing about twice more, and caused blind, murderous rage after that. And they sold like hotcakes, because we had a display. It was on an endcap next to the cash registers (where better to put impulse items?), and there were about a hundred of them. Fred would, several times a day, walk by, hit the switch on _every single one_, and walk away. If looks could kill, there wasn't a single cashier who would have avoided prison. Fred was an asshole. And everybody knew it.

But he was a smart asshole, and knew that everybody knew it, so he was only around for a year or two before he found another job, and gave two weeks' notice. A day or two before his last day, the most memorable Fred event occurred.

It was an El Niño year, and it was the heart of Wet Summer (Southern California has three seasons: Summer, Wet Summer, and Road Construction. Some years, we skip Wet Summer, which is usually January or February). On this particular day, it was raining so hard we could barely see the cars in the parking lot. It's the end of the day, and Bill is heading home. He gets to the front door, and stops, perhaps to contemplate whether or not we had everything in stock that he'd need to build an ark, and Fred walks up to stand beside him for a moment of companionable silence. Then offers the following words of wisdom:

"You'll be OK. Turds float."

I was truly surprised he wasn't tossed out of the store on the spot, even if he did only have a day or so left. Bill had mellowed as he got older. Or maybe he'd gotten rich enough to have a sense of humor surgically implanted.

**

But speaking of Bill, there was the day that the store manager (not Fred) in the fishbowl (the store where the corporate office is) got a comment from a customer about an employee who smelled of alcohol. The manager, very concerned, asked which one, and the customer pointed out Bill. "Well, you see, he's the owner, so he's allowed to do that." Customer thought that was perfectly reasonable. (Bill is the sort of guy who is absolutely incapable of walking by a customer who wants to give us money, and not stopping to see if he can convince them to give us more, whether he had a shot before he headed home or not.)

**

And then there's Abe. Abe has true leadership skills, and his people generally like and respect him. But he's one of those people who can't turn a computer on and off without help, and literally can't read an error message off a monitor screen in front of him because "I don't know anything about computers." (I know this from experience - multiple times) Completely helpless with computers. So he was transferred to a different store. The morning he took over, he tries to ring up a sale, and corporate had forgotten to add his logon to the new store. Phone call, complete panic, and I didn't have the security at the time to fix it. "Have a cashier sign in for you, and <guy who can fix it> will be here shortly." Civilization ending catastrophe averted. A little while later, the receipt printer runs out of paper, and we're in the middle of cash register upgrades, and he hasn't seen the new model before that day. Another phone call, complete panic again. "Have a cashier show you how, they've done it a hundred times." (The new printers, it's a matter of open the cover, drop in the paper, close the cover. No feeding paper through slots you can't see, like the old ones.) Catastrophe averted again.

The next morning, I get an email from a customer complimenting him by name on his customer service. (We get at least ten times as many complaints as compliments, so this is notable.) We need to make sure he has an assistant who is computer savvy, but there are reasons why we keep Abe around.

Wolfycat received a Retail Balls Award February 2011, for choosing her sanity, health and well being over an unbearable working environment at a Ross:

Hello, my RHU pretties!

It has finally happened. After all the shit, hell, and abuse that I've gone through working at Smosh, I'm finally free.

Fabio was no longer coming to work at my store as often, which left Barbs with the reins. I swear she's freaking useless. I get put on fitting rooms as the sole attendant, and every time she tries to page me to go cashier. Then she gets pissed off when I page her telling her that I'm doing fitting rooms. Sorry, queen bee, but what do you expect me to do? If I'm not there, custys are free to frolic and be NATs and have sex all in the stalls or something. And I'm actually serious about that last one. This one couple kept trying to sneak past me to do a rendezvous in the men's fitting rooms. Yeah, the smell of restrooms and industrial cleaning supplies totally get me feeling randy.

The last straw came when one day, I was put on as backup cashier. About halfway through my shift, I notice her standing at the end of my row behind me. I asked her what was up, but she said to just ignore her. Hard thing to do when you're working and you feel a glare stinging you in the back of the head. After the wave of customers finished, I cleaned my area and went to go size the juniors section. Barbs stopped me on the way.

Barbs: You've been turning away returns all day.

Me: Yeah...I'm not on the returns desk. I'm just backup.

Barbs: But that doesn't give a reason why you haven't been taking returns.

Me:...The sign above those registers say Purchases Only. The returns function is disabled in those computers. That's why I haven't been doing returns.

Barbs: *huff* You think you know everything.

Me: Uh, no. That's just general knowledge. *walks away*

Then, later on, we were completely swamped up front like a mother. All registers except one were being manned. Even the girls who didn't speak English were trying to struggle on registers. Even with all the effort, all the lines were probably ten feet long. During all this, Barbs is just sitting on her ass in the back office, yelling at us on the intercom. Not the phone. The intercom. Where every single custy can hear. This eggs on some rude custys to start shouting insults at the cashiers.

By this time, every cashier on register is conspiring revenge. My supervisor grabs the phone and asks Barbs to come help on the last register. She declines.

Then a crusty decides that I'm trying to rip her off. She had come to the front with a dress that had no price tag. It was a size 22, typically a "women's world" item, so I grab the price book and scan it in for a women's world dress. It was like $19.99 or $29.99. She starts bitching that it's an outrageous price (Really? It was in awesome condition and something you would find at the mall for more than $50). But as it was a Tuesday, I could offer her a Crusty Tuesday 10% off discount to stop her whining. That wasn't good enough. She wanted a manager. I page Barbs up and NO ANSWER. I start paging like a maniac. Old lady snaps.

"This service is horrible! I waited in line for an hour! Blah,blah,blah, where-the-hell-is-your-manager-you-probably-didn't-call-because-you-know-you're-in-trouble, blah, blah, blah!!"

My supervisor is up to her elbows in a huge transaction nearing $1000, so she couldn't help. The lines are starting to dwindle due to people getting fed up on waiting, so naturally, it's like they punt their items across the length of the store before bailing. Then a rude-ass custy comes up behind me and jabs me in the shoulder. I throw her hand off of me and demand her to step away. She backs off of me, but yells that she's never shopping here again because we all suck. I yell good riddance to her.

Old lady says to me "You shouldn't speak to her like that! Blah, blah, blah, oldladytalk."

Then I hear "What the hell have you done?" behind me. Barbs suddenly decides to show her face. I snap.

Me: What the hell have I done? Where the hell were you when I paged you a couple hundred times?

Me: Because this lady *gestures to crusty* wanted your assistance, but you were not responding at all! She's been waiting--we've ALL been waiting for about 20 minutes for your ass to show up!

Supervisor: And why the hell did you even refuse to help us on register when you KNOW we're completely swamped?

Barbs: I didn't REFUSE, I just needed to do other stuff.

Supervisor: That's complete BS, Barbs!

That's when most of the lines started getting shorter as more people left. Even the crusty. Supervisor and Barbs are still verbally sparring, when the next custy in my line comes up glaring at me in a way that I feel like he's possessed by a demon or something. He has a pack of glassware that he picks up from his cart and slams it on the counter. Shattering ensues and he starts cussing me out like a psycho.

That's when I said fuck it. No more dealing with an incompetent manager not worth shit, no more insulting custies, no more displeased whiny crusties, and no more freaky demonic possesions that need Jesus. I QUIT!

I currently slave away at the same place as Jit, (K-Barf) but hopefully am leaving soon.

Something happened today that simply infuriated meI work at customer service - so I have to run a sales register, refund register and a bunch of extra machines simultaneously.

We were backed up today so I opened my sales register. This lady comes up with 50+ items - all pet related too. into my line. I'm thinking ugh this is going to suck, because I have to hand scan each item ( no register scanners. MEH.)Buttttt I put on my kiss ass smile and cheerfully say "Hi how are you today? Do u have your rewards Card."

BitchAssCustomer: 347 -

Ms.E One minute mam let me cue up that screen >>>>> - please don't spew out ur number to me. I cant cue it up the second you start talking. I'm a human. Greet me back please.

The number mam?

BAC: ####......

>>> So I'm scanning...scanning...scanning.....bag. Bag. Bag.

Ms.E: Ok so that'll be 3xx.xx for today.

BAC: But I didn't want those Denta Bones.

*note she never said anything to me regarding them, she placed them on the counter and watched me scan/bag the 8 boxes.

Ms.E: I'm sorry mam. Just wait one minute I have to have a manager override and void out the total since its more than 2 items.

BAC: That's fine...

*Call for override. I tell her I'm going to take a return while we wait. She says that's fine.

Cue in Dynamite - awesome manager.

Dyna: Sorry about that ma'am, here you go she'll go ahead and ring you up. EXIT.

Seeing as how all the items are bagged I start to type in the UPC numbers, but no. No that's simply unacceptable.

BAC: No you can't do that.

Ms.E: I'm sorry mam?

BAC: I want new bags. Those are dirty now.

*The bags are all neatly in her cart. Which I put in there since she won't do anything to help/be nice.

Ms.E: I'm sorry mam?

BAC: Well I work for the humane society and they all need to be clean.

Ah yess....because animals exposed to dirt and the elements is unnatural. So I swallow it.

Ms.E Well would you like to use your tax ID so that the company doesn't have to pay tax?

Bac: No.

So she wants to pay the 30 something $s in tax...suspicion. Anyways..Re do the ENTIRE transaction, reringing and bagging her items per her request.

Ms.E (Big smile for the finale) Your total for today is $3xx.xx

BAC: I have coupons.

This bitch takes out a fucking fistful - I kid you not - a mother fucking fistful of coupons from her purse and throws them on the counter.

HIT 4.

FUCKING A.

Proceed to scan all coupons and hand her back the ones that aren't eligible. (expired/different product)

BAC: Cant you just see if they scan?

Ms.E: No mam, the store looses money if we accept expired coupons.

BAC: mhmmm.......

So bitch keeps up with her nonchalant attitude while I'm scanning and growing a returns line.

FINALLY DONE.

Ms.E: So the total is $1xx.xx (total bitch. great savings but total bitch)

So BAC pays. I say bye have a nice day bleh bleh bleh and I go to the return line, turning my back to her ridiculousness.

BUT IT'S NOT OVER!!!!!

She waits there, I work through my line, then hesitatingly turn to her and ask her if there is something else she needed

BAC: Id like to return these.

Ms.E: What in particular mam?

BAC: All of it (SMILES for the first time since she came)

And I get the full amount before coupons back.

OH HELL TO THE NO.

While it's true that the computer doesn't automatically deduct the coupons it's up to the service person to alter the price to the correct amount.

Ms.E: Ma'am that's entirely fraudulent. If you no longer want the products I'll be happy to return them for you but you aren't getting any more back than what you paid.

BAC: OH FUCK NO!

Bitch proceeds to have a temper tantrum. Ripping her RE BAGGED bags all over the floor. I'm calling security when an ASM comes up: Lets call him Push over *hint hint* and asks what the problem is.

BAC: She won't give me my money back!!

I patiently explain the situation to PU and he comes back with//

PU: I'm sorry mam, we'll go ahead and give you the full return.

DUMBASS SAY WHAT??? I'm fucking pissed.

He can tell. "Do the full amount Ms.E."

He watches me do her fucking return and makes sure I give her the full amount back.

I just discovered your site and have experience this shit firsthand. I work as a server at a stir-fry restaurant that provides customers with the crap to make their own food. It can be fun but a lot of people turn it into something terribly childish and make us all think that society is starting to turn out like the characters in the movie Idiocracy. >:(

Anyway at the restaurant we have a manager that has to be the saddest example of human being. He is 43, lives alone, hasn't had a girlfriend in over 10 years (which he is proud of!!!), and is probably the biggest fuckface around.

I'll give a few example of what he enjoys doing to employees to show them the ruling power that a middle aged restaurant manager has.

1. He will stand in front of the "out" door that leads into the restaurant like its ok and then when I have to walk through I hit him and spill soup all over the place, he thinks it's hilarious and will laugh. Whenever I know he is there, I enjoy slamming the door open with my foot. One time he almost got knocked onto his ass.... he didn't laugh that time.

2. We are allowed to eat on the job. We just have to ask a manager before we do, more often than ever they are cool with it, except him. There are usually 2 managers on at once. One time, a girl asked the opposite manager if she could eat and she said yes. Once the d-bag manager saw the food though, he threw it out. His claim was that since she didn't come and ask HIM that she would have to ask his permission then and there and then pay for the food again. He claimed that since he was in the restaurant, she should have asked him. Doesn't make a fucking difference dude!!!! The other manager has as much authority as you do.

3. Trying to make stupid jokes is something he is good at, none of them are funny, the ones that he thinks are hilarious offend the mothers that work there (think dead baby, although I love a good dead baby joke sometimes, around a mother is not a good time.)

4. He always loves to shout to the world when he does something wrong. Its because he makes mistakes so little that everyone should gather around and see that he is human?? HE IS A FUCKING TWAT!!!

......and finally the whole reason I sent this in:

One day I had to change a beer keg and grabbed the empty one and took at back to the cooler to grab a new one. The Twat manager is in there doing inventory. I pass him in the cooler to go grab the full keg and start to bring it back (anyone who works in a bar or restaurant knows that kegs are not easy to carry with one hand, and we have to, cause we have a narrow cooler.) So anyway I'm walking back to the front of the cooler and he is literally standing there with a clipboard checking things off with a pencil. This is the conversation that takes place.

Hi again, Roast Beef Slinger here. Work has been fairly uneventful, except for this past week, which has been a nightmare.

A bit of important background: About 3-4 months ago, we get this new manager in training in our store. She got hired as a "fast track supervisor", which basically means she goes through the regular store manager training, runs her own store for 6 months, and if she can do it, gets promoted to the supervisor position. Oooo.

The first 8 weeks or so, she is pretty quiet, doesn't really get to know the people she's working with, managers or crew. In this time, I finally catch wind that she is the ex-wife of our regional HR director, and that he is (supposedly) the reason she got hired in the first place. This is totally shady, and now I'm starting to not like her.

The weeks go by, she is slow at everything she does. Then, rather then send her to another store for her 6 month indenture, they send away our current (and awesome!) store manager, and we are stuck with this bitch. So now she has to do paperwork, enter the truck order, count inventory, and do the schedule all by herself.

She begins failing, miserably. One manager steps in and helps her, only because she doesn't want to see us suffer. But then that manager has to go away, too. :(

So now, bitch manager is starting to get lazy. Rather than doing the counts on Sunday that are supposed to be submitted by Monday morning, she does them early Monday morning. The schedule that is supposed to be out by 5pm Thurs isn't out until Friday, and it's half-assed at that. Every single truck order either had something on it we didn't need or didn't have something we did need, or sometimes both! She's also not that great at showing up on time, and started having car troubles. Granted, it was pretty cold, but she's salaried at $85k/yr, I think she could afford it (rather than splurge on new wigs... you think I'm joking, but I'm not.)

And now starts the week from hell.

Last week, she gets pink eye, and stays home for 3 days. Well, we're short-staffed on managers anyway, so everyone is pushing OT, but has she worked more than her 48hr/week this past week to make up for it? Has she covered anyone's shift? Nope.

Sunday, her first day back, she's 30 min late because her kids turned her alarm off. Ya, ok, because pre-teens are up at 8am on a Sunday? Whatever. Except she's used this excuse before... Hmm. Monday, she asks 1 mgr to stay an hour later, and he says why not! But really it was just so she could go home early and bring her kids dinner and not pay for it. (Oh, I forgot to mention.. employees aren't allowed to order food that "might be for more than them", so we can't bring food home to whoever we live with. But she can.)

Wednesday is the kicker. We start cooking roasts for the day anytime between 6am and 8am (the oven gets turned on at 5am to allow it to heat up). The cooking chart called for 1 roast to go in the oven at 6am that day. Cue 11:45 when my good friends goes into work and finds no roast in the holding oven, looks to the cooking oven, and sees a roast at 100 degrees because the oven didn't heat up properly this morning!!

I'm going to mention here that managers are supposed to check various temps (cooler, cold wells, shake machine, oven, friers, etc) 3 times per day to make sure they are correct, and the first time is at 5:30am. Now, it doesn't take any oven 30 min to heat up to 200 degrees, which is what ours is set at, so they should've known VERY EARLY that the oven was having a bitchy day.

But no. She doesn't do half the paperwork she's supposed to do. (Also, the prep person should really be watching the roast, at least have it in the back of his/her head when it should be done, and if it's taking more than 4 hrs, or it isn't even the right color at 3hrs, something is wrong..) So my friend goes and gets a roast from another store, at which time he calls me and tells me this. Good laugh for the day.

Today, I text the same friend asking if he's at work, and if so, is the schedule done? Well I'm in class, but he calls me to leave a voice mail, because I have a feeling he just *knew* I was going to freak out.

I text my other friend in the mean time, and find out that bitch manager was A WHOLE HOUR late to work today, because her kids turned her alarm off again. Yet, she did have time to stop for coffee & oatmeal. He also told me the other part of what happened yesterday. So rather than be personable to our customers and apologize for not having any roast beef for 45 minutes during lunch and offering some free food, she made everyone else EXCEPT HER deal with the customers, and she told them to LIE and say our slicer wasn't working.

Not even an "oops we messed up, sorry" but an outright lie, and she hid in the back the whole time. I talked to my friend, and he's planning something. He told me he left both the Director of Operations and the Area Supervisor voicemails about the past couple days. So I get out of class and listen to my voicemail.

I was scheduled for 26 hrs this past week, and next week I have 7. Granted, I asked for 3 days off, 1 of which I haven't worked in over a month because bitch is in cookie-cutter schedule mode. But apparently, because I ask for days off, doesn't mean she could even attempt to schedule me for the ~25hrs I've requested I receive each week.

Seriously though, 7?! It's not like I don't have availability for 18hrs during the other 4 days of that week...

Nobody is happy. I want to quit my job, but I can't pay for college if I do that, so I'm stuck here. :(

Just thought I would drop in and let everyone know that I quit working for JC Killme Portraits! We got a new manager a couple of months ago. She is honestly the most incompetent and meanest bitch I have ever had the misfortune to work under. Storytime!

A few weeks ago, I went in to work sick. I wasn't terribly sick mind you, just an ear infection. Unfortunately for me, the unbearable heat that we are forced to endure out here in Oklahoma made my symptoms worsen. An hour into my shift, I got really hot, dizzy, and nauseous. Knowing it wouldn't get better anytime soon, I called my manager to let her know that I would need someone to come and relieve me. I followed company policy and called absolutely everyone on our area call list. I couldn't reach anyone, so I called my manager back and let her know. She said it was okay and that she would come in.

So she gets there and starts bitching at me! Apparently, following policy when ill will get you written up! She then rants about how I'm not doing enough to hassle people into coming into our studio (I made calls from our list AND walked around approaching shoppers with all of our current coupons AND took coupons home for my dad to take to his factory to hand out.) She went on and on for about 10 minutes. Wouldn't have been so bad if she'd bothered to take me someplace private to do this. Instead, she does it in front of about 10 people who are standing at the customer service desk by the studio. I naturally complained to HR, but they didn't do shit.

Story 2:

Last Thursday, I was called in to work a few hours in the morning because we were really busy. Everything is fine until my coworker, (we'll call her Angel cuz she was nice most of the time) came into the camera room to tell me she had to leave. Her daughter had apparently fallen and busted her head open, and she was needed at the ER. No problem. The appointments were 40 minutes apart. We would only run behind by about half an hour. All the custys that came in were very understanding and didn't make a big deal.

I finally clock out at 2:30, half an hour past lunch closing time. I happily went down to meet my mom who had brought me niece and dog in for pictures at 3. I took the dog to a petstore while my mom went shopping for a little bit. I decided to call my manager to see who would be in at three. She told me that I would be working the rest of the day (WTF bitch! I can't take my nieces pics, it's against policy) and that my not being able to take a lunch break later was a personal problem.

So it was that I went back up and told my mom. She was rightly pissed just like me. I broke policy and took my nieces pictures like a good slave. Not long into the session, I started to get shaky. I'm a diabetic and needed to eat. So I decided that it would be a good idea to leave before I passed out. I followed policy and notified Bitch and the district manager that I needed to leave and couldn't wait for a replacement.

A few days pass with no calls from management or HR, so I call to see if I'm fired or if I needed to hand in a letter of resignation, because I decided the studio was a shitty place to work.

Bitch texted me and said I was welcome to hand in that letter whenever I liked. So that's exactly what I'm going to do when I go to pick up my nieces pictures. Here's the letter. Let me know what y'all think!

--Photoslave

PS: I'm keeping the nickname since I'm still a photographer. I'm starting my own photography business when I move in a couple months.

5 August 2011

Management

JC Killme Portraits

Promenade Mall

Tulsa, OK

To whom it may concern,

It is with deep sadness that I must tender my resignation from jcpportraits. Until a few weeks ago, I considered this to be the best job I have ever had. Unfortunately, the recent changes in the studio have caused me to rethink this.

I feel that I am no longer seen as a valuable member of the team, but merely as a pawn to be used for the financial gain of the company. Over the past several weeks, I have been severely mistreated. I am sorry to see the studio decline to such a state that it is not a friendly place to work at.

I am resigning, not for the company’s sake, but for my own emotional well being. Effectively immediately, I voluntarily resign from my position of Studio Associate.

I do wish to offer my sincere thanks to the company for the wonderful learning opportunities. I will be sure to treat this knowledge well and apply it to my life and career.